Abolish Slavery Summary

The book Solitary: The Inside Story of Supermax Isolation and How We Can Abolish It divides into three parts: “Harsh Prison Conditions,” “The Human Damage,” and “The Alternative to Solitary.” In the first section, author Terry Allen Kupers explores the rise of supermax prisons and the normalization of long-term solitary confinement. Throughout the book, Kupers examines how isolation damages people’s psyches and its connections to race, violence, and gender. In the final section, Kupers requests a development of rehabilitative attitudes among all prison staff (as well as legislators and the public) and a plan to keep individuals with severe mental illnesses out of jails and prisons. Kupers argues for improvements in methodologies of protecting and secluding disturbed or disruptive prisoners. Kupers’ recommendations include a massive reduction of the prison population, concurrent upgrading of mental health and rehabilitation programming in the community as well as in correctional settings. Furthermore, the book proclaims that the estimated figure of 100,000 inmates in solitary is an incorrect underestimation. Kupers argues that supermax facilities were overbuilt in the 1990s and their use then, and currently has been counter-rehabilitative and counter-therapeutic. Throughout the book, Kupers' position is clear: we must replace the culture of punishment with one of rehabilitation. Kupers’ view concentrates on prisoners with mental illness and in many sections, he notes that time served in isolation exacerbates inmates' condition and frequently leads to suicide. Kupers argues that by devaluing and dehumanizing inmates, America’s supermax confinement creates monsters. To substantiate his arguments, Kupers utilizes photographs taken inside various prisons. The most eye-opening picture shows a group therapy session at a prison in which each of the individuals is imprisoned in a small cage and grouped in a linear position. Kupers provides verbal descriptions of how prisoners are exposed to maltreatment of all human necessities, especially medical and psychiatric needs. The book present situations in which prisoners are ignored by staff for …show more content…
However, as the book illustrates, emerging research and anecdotal evidence indicates that the conditions of supermax confinement have become increasingly punitive, strict and similar to traditional non-civil approaches to punishment. I would argue that punitive sanctions have historically been a widespread feature of the criminal justice system. Then, the question is ‘what is new?” Unfortunately, Kupers’ concentrated on punitiveness detracts our need for the development of progressive realist account of contemporary crime control or crime prevention. Social policies or reforms cannot focus on popular punitiveness or the alternative, rehabilitation, without finding or exploring a balance between the politics, presentation, actuality, and fear of crime. Thus, social workers’ contributions to this discussion should remain critical. While acknowledging the actualities within Kupers’ perspective, social work’s criticism of solitary confinement must expose America’s lack of preventive …show more content…
Even if a person is mentally stable, any time served in prison will increase his or her vulnerability to the development of mental illness. Also, policies and practices have turned our prisons into revolving-door treatment (or in many cases, non-treatment) facilities, and those that provide therapeutic remain short-terms, under-resourced and ineffective. To me, this signifies that social workers have critical roles to play in all aspects of correctional policy and operations, from entry to release, from creating smart and safe alternatives to monitoring prison practice and advocating and implementing preventive methods. Social work’s involvement should remain as complex as the criminal system, but never as closed and